Dower or morning gift (Latindoarium, or Latinized
Germanic morganaticum; Fr. douaire, GermanMorgengabe [Morgen, "morning," + Gabe,
"gift"]) was a provision accorded by law to a wife for her support
in the event that she should survive her husband (i.e., become a widow). It was settled on the bride by agreement at the
time of the wedding, or provided by law. ("Settled" here refers to
a gift into trust.)

The term "morning gift" derives from the Germanic practice of
the bridegroom's officially granting the gift
on the morning after the wedding night; making such a settlement
was evidence that the marriage had been consummated and the bride
had proven to be a virgin. However, in popular parlance, the
term may be used for a life interest in property settled by a
husband on his wife at any time, not just at the wedding. The verb
is to dower (dower, dowers,
dowered).

In popular usage, the term dower may be confused
with:

A dowager is a
widow (who may receive her dower). The term is especially used of a
noble or royal widow who no longer occupies the position she held
during the marriage. For example, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was
technically the Dowager queen after the demise of George VI (though she
was referred to by the more informal title "Queen Mother"), and Princess Lilian is
currently the Dowager Duchess of Halland in heraldic parlance. Such a dowager will receive
the income from her dower property. (The term "Empress Dowager", in Chinese history, has a
different meaning.)

Meaning

Being for the widow and being accorded by law, dower differs
essentially from a conventional marriage portion such as the
dos of the old Roman law, the Frenchdot, or the Englishdowry.

The bride received a right to certain property from the
bridegroom or his family. It was intended to ensure her livelihood
in widowhood, and it was to be kept separate and in the wife's
possession.

Dower is the gift given by the groom to the bride, customarily
on the morning after the wedding (hence morning gift,
though all dowerings from the man to his fiancée, either during the
betrothal period, or wedding, or afterwards, even as late as in the
testamentary dowering, are understood as dowers if specifically
intended for the maintenance of the widow).

Dower has been a property arrangement for marriage used
apparently first in early medieval German cultures (such as Langobards and Goths), and the church drove its adoption into
other countries, in order to improve the wife's security by this
additional benefit.

The practice of dower was prevalent in the Germanic-descending and Scandinavic-descending
parts of Europe, such as Sweden, Germany, Normandy and successor
states of the Langobardian kingdom.

The husband was legally prevented from using the wife's dower —
as contrasted with her dowry,
which was brought to the marriage by the bride and used by both
spouses. This often meant that the woman's legal representative,
usually a male relative, became guardian or executor of the dower, to ensure that it was
not squandered.

Usually, the wife was free from kin limitations to use (and
bequeath) her dower to whatever and whomever she pleased. It may
have become the property of her next marriage, been given to an
ecclesiastical institution, or been inherited by her children from
other relationships than that from which she received it.

History

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Code of
Hammurabi

The Code
of Hammurabi from ancient Babylon prescribed what the widow was
entitled to from her husband's estate. This included both the value
of her dowry and whatever her
husband deeded to her. It is one of the earliest surviving legal
documents.

Roman era

Dower is thought to have been suggested by the marriage gift
which Tacitus found to be
usual among the Germans.
This gift he terms dos, but contrasts it with the
dos of the Roman law, which was a gift on the part of the
wife to the husband, while in Germany the gift was made by the husband to the
wife.[1] There
was indeed in the Roman law what was termed donatio propter
nuptias, a gift from the family of the husband, but this was
only required if the dos were brought on the part of the
wife. So too in the special instance of a widow (herself poor and
undotated) of a husband rich at the time of his death, an ordinance
of the Christian Emperor Justinian
secured her the right to a part of her husband's property, of which
no disposition of his could deprive her.

Establishment in Western
Europe

The general establishment of the principle of dower in the
customary law of Western Europe, according to Maine,[2] is to
be traced to the influence of the Church, and
to be included perhaps among its most arduous triumphs. Dower is an
outcome of the ecclesiastical practice of exacting from the husband
at marriage a promise to endow his wife, a promise retained in form
even now in the marriage ritual of the Established Church in England.[3] Dower
is mentioned in an ordinance of King Philip
Augustus of France (1214),
and in the almost contemporaneous Magna Carta (1215); but it seems to have
already become customary law in Normandy, Sicily, and Naples, as well as in England. The object of
both ordinance and charter was to regulate the amount of the dower
where this was not the subject of voluntary arrangement, dower by
English law consisting of a wife's life estate in one-third of the
lands of the husband "of which any issue which she might have had
might by possibility have been heir".[4]

England and other
Common Law Countries

There is judicial authority of the year 1310 for the proposition
that dower was favoured by law,[5] and at
a less remote period it was said to be with life and liberty one of
three things which "the law favoreth". In England in the late 18th
century, it became common for men to hold land with a trust that
prevented their wives' acquiring dower. Accordingly the English
statute, the Fines and Recoveries Act of 1833 was passed to impair
the inviolability of dower by empowering husbands to cut off by
deed or will their wives from dower. Wives married before the Act
still had (in certain cases) to acknowledge the deed before a
commissioner to bar their right to dower in property which their
husband sold. This was simpler than the previous procedure, which
had required a fine to be levied in the Court of Common Pleas,
a fictitious
proceeding, by which she and her husband formally remitted
their right to the property to the purchaser.

In English law, dower was one third. However, in the early
modern period, it was common for a wife to bar her right to dower
in advance under a marriage settlement, under which she agreed to
take instead a jointure, that is a particular interest in her
husband's property, either a particular share, or a life interest
in a particular part of the land, or an annuity. This was often
part of an arrangement by which she gave up her property to her
husband in exchange for her jointure, which would accordingly be
greater than a third. Strictly dower was only available from land
that her husband owned, but a life tenant under a settlement was
often given power to appoint a jointure for his wife. The wife
would retain her right to dower (if not barred by a settlement)
even if her husband sold the property; however this right could
also be barred by a fictitious court proceeding known as levying a
fine. The widow of a copyholder was usually provided for by the
custom of the manor
with freebench, an equivalent right to dower,
but often (but not necessarily) a half, rather than a third.

Scotland

Under Scots law, the
part of the estate that cannot be denied to a surviving wife is
referred to as jus
relictae.

United
States

It was the law of dower unimpaired by statute, which according
to the American
commentator Chancellor Kent has been "with some
modifications everywhere adopted as part of the municipal
jurisprudence of the United States".[6] But
while the marriage portion, dot, is, yet dower is not,
known to the law of Louisiana, and it has now been expressly
abolished in some other States and in some territories. The
instances of legislative modifications are numerous and
important.

Relationship to religious
profession

During the pre-Reformation period, a man who
became a monk and made his religious profession in England was
deemed civilly dead, "dead in law" ;[7]
consequently his heirs inherited his land forthwith as though he
had died a natural death. Assignment of dower in his hand would
nevertheless be postponed until the natural death of such a man,
for only by his wife's consent could a married man be legally
professed in religion, and she was not allowed by her consent to
exchange her husband for dower. After the Reformation and the
enactment of the English statute of 11 and 12 William III, prohibiting
"papists" from inheriting or purchasing lands, a Roman Catholic widow was not held to be
debarred of dower, for dower accruing by operation of law was
deemed to be not within the prohibitions of the statute. By a
curious disability of old English law a Jewish widow born in England
would be debarred of dower in land which her husband, he having
been an Englishman of the same faith and becoming converted after
marriage, should purchase, if she herself remained unconverted.

Modern
status

Of dower (douaire) as it existed in the old French law
no trace is to be found in the existing law of France. But brought
to Canada from the mother
country in pre-Revolutionary times, customary dower accruing by
operation of law is yet recognized in the law of the former French
province of Quebec. The civil
death which by English law seems to have applied to men only, might
be by the French law incurred by women taking perpetual religious
vows. Therefore, a widow entering into religion would lose her
dower, although in some regions she was allowed to retain a
moderate income.[8] And now
by the law of Quebec a widow joining certain religious orders of
the province is deemed civilly dead and undoubtedly would suffer
loss of dower.

Morganatic
marriage: a post-medieval application

Some well-born persons have been prone to marry an ineligible
spouse. Particularly in European countries where the equal birth of
spouses (Ebenbürtigkeit) was an important condition to
marriages of dynasts of reigning houses and high nobility, the old
matrimonial and contractual law provision of dowering was taken
into a new use by institutionalizing the morganatic
marriage. Marriage being morganatical prevents the passage of
the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children
born of the marriage.

Morganatic, from the Latin phrase matrimonium ad
morganaticam, refers to the dower (Latin:
morganaticum, German: Morgengab, Swedish:
morgongåva ). When a marriage contract is made that the
bride and the children of the marriage will not receive anything
else (than the dower) from the bridegroom or from his inheritance
or patrimony or from his clan, that sort of marriage was dubbed as
"marriage with only the dower and no other inheritance", i.e.
matrimonium ad morganaticum.

Neither the bride nor any children of the marriage has any right
on the groom's titles, rights, or entailed property. The children
are considered legitimate on other counts and the prohibition of bigamy applies.

The practice of "only-doweried" is close to pre-nuptial contracts excluding the spouse
from property, though children are usually not affected by
prenuptials, whereas they certainly were by morganatical
marriage.

Morganatic marriage contained an agreement that the wife and the
children born of the marriage will not receive anything further
than what was agreed in pre-nuptials, and in some cases may have
been zero, or something nominal. Separate nobility titles were
given to morganatic wives of dynasts of reigning houses, but it
sometimes included no true property. This sort of dower was far
from the original purpose of the bride receiving a settled property
from the bridegroom's clan, in order to ensure her livelihood in
widowhood.

The practice of morganatic marriage was most common in
historical German states, where equality of birth
between the spouses was considered an important principle among the
reigning houses and high nobility. Morganatic marriage has not been
and is not possible in jurisdictions that do not allow sufficient
freedom of contracting, as it is an agreement containing that
pre-emptive limitation to the inheritance and property rights of
the wife and the children. Marriages have never been considered
morganatic in any part of the United Kingdom.

Islam

A settlement from the groom to the bride is an essential part of
current traditional Muslim marriages: a man must pay mahr to his
bride. It is considered a gift which she has to agree on. The dower
can be any value as long as it is agreed upon by both parties. When
the groom gives his bride the dower, it becomes her property. In
case of a divorce, she won't have to give up her dower unless she
is the one who requested the divorce. In the latter case, her
husband may ask her to return the dower to him. However, if she has
requested the divorce due to her suffering any form of abuse, or
has other acceptable reasons for a divorce in Islamic laws (such as
her husband suffering from illness or being impotent, etc.), the
current judge often will not ask her to give the dower back to her
husband.

The amount promised or paid to the bride forms part of her
personal property and is of assistance to her in times of financial
need, such as a divorce or desertion by the husband. While the Mahr
is usually in the form of cash, it may also be a house or viable
business that is put in her name and can be run and owned entirely
by her if she so chooses.

Dower in the Bahá'í
Faith

According to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Bahá'í
Faith's most holy book, the dower is paid from the groom to the
bride. The dower, if the husband lives in a city, is nineteen mithqáls (approx. 2.2 troy ounces) of pure
gold, or, if the husband lives outside a city, the same amount in
silver.

From LoveToKnow 1911

DOWER (through the Old Fr. douaire
from late Lat. dotarium, classical Lat. dos,dowry), in law, the life interest
of the widow in a third part of her husband's lands. There were
originally five kinds of dower: (I) at common law; (2) by custom; (3) ad ostium
ecclesiae, or at the church porch; (4) ex assensu patris; (5) de
la plus belle. The last was
a conveyance of tenure by knight service,
and was abolished in 1660, by the act which did away with old
tenures. Dower ad ostium ecclesiae, by which the bride was dowered at the church
porch (where all marriages used formerly to take place), and dower
ex assensu patris, by the father of the bridegroom, though
long obsolete, were formally abolished by the Dower Act 1834. Dower
is governed in the United
Kingdom, so far as women married after the 1st of January 1834
are concerned, by the Dower Act 1834, and under it only attaches on
the husband's death to the lands which he actually possessed for an
estate of inheritance at the time of his death. It
must be claimed within twelve years of the time of its accrual, but
only six years' arrears are recoverable. The wife is also entitled
to dower out of equitable estates, but joint estates are exempt. By
the act the wife's dower is placed completely under her husband's
control. It does not attach to any land actually disposed of by him
in his lifetime or by his will, nor to any land from which he has
declared by deed his wife shall
not be entitled to dower. He may also defeat her right, either as
to any particular land or to all his lands, by a declaration in his
will; while it is subject to all the deceased husband's debts and
contracts, and to any partial estates which he may have created
during his life or by his will. A widow tenant in dower may make leases for twenty-one
years under the Settled Estates Act 1878. Free-bench is an analogous right in regard to copyhold land; it does not
fall within the Dower Act 1834, and varies with the custom of each
manor. At common law, and prior
to the act of 1834, dower was of a very different nature. The
wife's right attached, while the husband was still living, to any
land whereof he was solely seised in possession (excluding
equitable and joint estates) for an estate of inheritance at any
time during the continuance of the marriage, provided that any
child the wife might have had could have been heir to the same,
even though no child was actually born. When once this right had
attached it adhered to the lands, notwithstanding any sale or
devise the husband might make; nor was it liable for his debts. In
this way dower proved an obstacle to the free alienation of land, for it was necessary for
a husband wishing to make a valid conveyance to obtain the consent
of his wife releasing her right to dower. This release was only
effected by a fine, the wife being separately examined. Often, by
reason of the expense involved, the wife's concurrence was not
obtained, and thus the title of the purchaser was defective during
the wife's lifetime. The acceptance of a jointure by the wife before marriage was,
however, destructive of dower, if after marriage she was put to her
election between it and dower. By the ingenuity of the old
conveyancers, devices, known as "uses to bar dower" (the effect of which was that the
purchaser never had at any time an estate of inheritance in
possession), were found to prevent dower attaching to newly
purchased lands, and so to enable the owner to give a clear title,
without the need of the wife's concurrence, in the event of his
wishing, in his turn, to convey the land. All this was, however,
swept away by the Dower Act 1834, and a purchaser of land no longer
need trouble himself to inquire whether the dower of the wife of
the vendor has been barred, or to insist on her concurrence in a
fine. (H. S. S.)